


In Two Thousand Words or Less

by recoveringrabbit



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Drabble Collection, F/M, appearances from other canon characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-17
Updated: 2017-03-18
Packaged: 2018-04-09 18:41:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 14,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4360103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/recoveringrabbit/pseuds/recoveringrabbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We all write drabbles now and again. Here is where I collect mine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Five Times Skye Had Questions About FitzSimmons, and One Time She Did Not

**Author's Note:**

> Five Times Skye Had Questions About FitzSimmons, and One Time She Did Not.

“So,” Skye says, sitting at the bar eating a cup of yogurt, “do you and Fitz actually share clothes, or just match on purpose?”

 

“Neither,” Simmons protests.  “Fitz is a man. He wouldn’t ever wear my clothes.”

 

“So the blue sweater, and the white shirt with the dots…”

 

“Sheer accident.”

 

“So, never.”

 

Simmons shakes her head emphatically.  “Well, except the oatmeal-coloured cardigan.  And socks, sometimes.  If they get mixed up in the wash.”

 

“Uh-huh.” Skye scrapes the inside of her yogurt cup and pops the last spoon in her mouth, not quite camouflaging her butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth expression.

 

*

 

“So,” Skye says, groaning as FitzSimmons high-five without looking, “you guys are never going to let us catch up, are you?”

 

Simmons gleefully pushes their counter across the Pictionary board. “Nope.”

 

“Do you ever miss one?”

 

They look at each other and think.  “Cheese grater?” Fitz finally offers.

 

Simmons shakes her head.  “You were looking at the wrong word.  Even Mum and Dad agreed it didn’t count.”

 

“There’s a reason we’re usually put on separate teams.”

 

Skye appeals to Ward, who offers no sympathy.  “You’re the one who said they were psychically linked.”

 

“Fine,” Skye says, and grabs a new card from the box.

 

*

 

“So,” Skye says, throwing down the SHIELD manual she has been pretending to read, “what _is_ Simmons’s type?”

 

“B positive,” Fitz replies without looking up.

 

Skye rolls her eyes.  “Not her blood type. Type in guys.” Fitz looks up, startled, and she pretends not to see.  “ ‘cause what she told that guy at the Hub was an outright lie, but she must have a type of some kind.”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

“She’s never gone out with any guys?”

 

“Of course she has,” he says, hackles rising.

 

“So what were they like?”

 

He goes back to the device he’s fiddling with and answers without thinking. “Tall.  Muscular.  Often black. Usually dumb as oxen. Never good enough for her.”

 

“Mmhmm,” Skye says, and lets it drop. 

 

*

“So,” Skye says, sauntering into the lab and dropping into a free chair, “What happens to SHIELD agents when they get too old to work?”

 

“Most of the specialists die first.”

 

“Fitz! They do not.”  Turning to a wide-eyed Skye, Simmons tries to reassure her.  “They might teach at the Academies or consult or work at one of the offices. Then there’s elder care homes for the very old ones.”

 

“Don’t want us spilling secrets,” he interjects.

 

“But scientists can work for ages.  We don’t have a forced retirement age.”

 

“So what are you going to do if you have an option?” Skye asks, completely casually.

 

“We’ll get a house back home in the country somewhere-”

 

“We’ll consult to make enough money to live-”

 

“-that will give us enough room for a lab-”

 

“-and get grants for our own research-”

 

“-where we’ll never have to move again if we don’t want to-”

 

“- and spend evenings writing papers -”

 

“-and I’m going to make sure we don’t.”

 

“-so we can finally be recognized for the work we do.”

 

Skye blinks, trying to wade through the flood of words.  “So, you’re planning on retiring together?” she asks finally.

 

“Of course,” Simmons shrugs, at the same time Fitz says “Naturally.”

 

“ ‘Kay,” Skye says, and smirks to herself.  

 

*

 

“So,” Skye says, sitting on the couch with her arms around her knees, “this sucks, right?”

 

Jemma purses her lips and clanks the tea things together.  “That’s one way to characterize the complete breakdown of our organization and finding out one of our own teammates is a traitor.”

 

“Are you okay?”

 

“Oh, fine.”  She is still a bad liar.

 

“Is…” Skye glances at the stairs.  “Is Fitz going to be okay?”

 

“Well, he killed people today.  That’s not usually something you’re just ‘okay’ after.”  Jemma sighs and throws Skye an apologetic glance. “Sorry.  Um, not yet.  Keeping busy will help.” 

 

“He knows he didn’t have a choice, right?”

 

Jemma sets her face determinedly, picking up the tea tray.  “He will do.  I am not letting him be anything other than okay.”

 

Skye can’t say anything, but she nods.

 

*

 

“So,” FitzSimmons says, holding hands behind the table where they think Skye can’t see, “we’re…”

 

“- a thing?”

 

“- an item?”

 

“- a couple?”

 

“-seeing each other?”

 

Skye turns the chair around with her foot and looks at them. “Yeah.”

 

Theirs were questions; hers was not.  The three of them look at each other, two of them confused.

 

“That’s it?”

 

“You don’t have questions?”

 

“Everyone has had questions.”

 

“Mum, Dad…”

 

“…Gran…”

 

“…Coulson…”

 

“…we thought for sure you would have a million of them.”

 

“Nope,” Skye says, and turns the chair back around.


	2. Stonehenge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FitzSimmons take a holiday.

They’ve made their way to Waterloo Station at an ungodly hour – honestly, when they left her parents’ house it was still dark – and he is standing, swaying really on the platform, ostensibly guarding the luggage while she buys the tickets.  He feels, rather than sees, her come up beside him.  “Did you get them?”

 

“Well…no.  I wanted to ask your opinion.”

 

His eyes are still closed as he answers. “It won’t be coherent.”

 

“I thought it would be fun to visit Stonehenge before we go to your gran’s.”

 

That does make him wake up, a little, and he blinks at her owlishly.  Gran makes these oatmeal cookies he’s been dreaming about the last four years at the Academy. Literally, he dreamt about them last night. “Stonehenge?  Is it on the way?”

 

“Not _exactly_.” She must be able to see his skepticism, because her next words come out in a rush.  “Fine, it’s completely out of the way, but when are we going to have another chance?  Once we get to Sci-Ops we’ll be stuck there until who knows when.”

 

“So you want to use our last holiday to visit a pile of rocks?”

 

She makes her eyes wide and blinks innocently. “The technical achievements of our forebears?”

 

“Excuse me, _my_ forebears aren’t from around here.”

 

“Mine are technically from France,” she says in a tone that asks “what of it?”

 

“Only I don’t think you can say-”

 

“Irrelevant, Fitz.”

 

And because it’s six a.m. and he doesn’t have enough fight in him, and because she has an answer for every single one of his objections, and because, much as he hates to admit it, he enjoys her odd urges for adventure, he eventually agrees.  They both regret it four hours later when they are standing on a sheep path in a gale-force wind with no money to eat until Tuesday and Stonehenge a far off prospect behind ropes.  He manages not to say I Told You So.

 

Jemma spats out her hair for the two-hundreth time. “Now I know why we never came to see it before.”  Shivering, she burrows into her coat and shouts to make herself heard over the wind. “I could really use a cup of tea about now.”

 

There is no kind answer he can make to that, so he shouts back, “But it’s a remarkable technical achievement! I’m so proud to come from these people! I’m sure I would be even prouder if we could get closer than ten yards!”

 

She shoots him a glare that could penetrate an iceberg, which means it has a chance to thaw out the ice-lollies that have replaced his fingers.  “Fine, I made a mistake! You don’t have to rub it in.”

 

“I don’t know, the friction might be useful to keep warm.”

 

The glare holds for as long as it takes her to get the joke.  Then she bursts out laughing, which makes him laugh too.  It’s only for a second, though.  The air they suck in is so cold that the laugh quickly turns to a coughing fit, which only makes it worse.  Finally, with tears streaming down her face, she grins and manages to shout “Let’s get out of here!”

 

“Agreed!”

 

They start to head back down the asphalt walkway to the tram, until he remembers something and stops, fumbling in his pocket. “Wait, Jemma!”

 

She turns, scrunching up her face as the wind hits her head-on.

 

He holds up his phone.  “We came all this way.  We’ve got to get a picture!”

 

They are so miserable that they only take one, not even stopping to see if their eyes are open.  The resulting photo is blurry, with Stonehenge completely obscured by Jemma’s flying hair; both of their noses are red and hers is wrinkled up because the wind shifted directions just as he was snapping.

 

It becomes his favourite photo, anyway, and he keeps a framed copy above his headboard next to the tiny TARDIS.


	3. The Obligatory Sick-fic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A nasty cold turns into something much worse.

He knocked on the door of her dorm and waited patiently for her strangled “Come in.”  Then he shifted his burden to one hand, gingerly using the other to open the door enough to poke his head in.  “Are you decent?”

 

“Fitz.”  She pushed herself up in the bed and swiped at her nose with a crumpled tissue. “You’re fine.  But I wouldn’t get too close – it’s a particularly nasty strain.”

 

Needing both hands to make sure he didn’t spill, he kicked the door shut.  “I brought you some soup.”

 

“Aw, Fitz.”  It was impossible to get out any more than that; she launched into a coughing fit that lasted his whole cautious journey across the room. Setting the bowl quickly down on her workstation, he snatched up the half-drunk water bottle sitting on the floor, unscrewed the cap, and brought it to her. 

 

“Wow, you look terrible,” he said when she was done.

 

She glared at him over the tissue she was using to wipe her eyes – thankfully, not the same one she had used to wipe her nose. “Thank you, Fitz. That’s exactly what a girl wants to hear” – she stopped to suck in a breath – “when she’s been hacking up a lung.”

 

“I meant, you look like you feel terrible.”

 

That comment didn’t receive a verbal response, but her look was eloquent.  He turned hastily to retrieve the soup.  “It’s chicken noodle.  That’s supposed to be good for you.”

 

Accepting the bowl with outstretched hands, she tipped her head from side-to-side.  “More or less, I suppose.  Unless you have a fever, which you’re supposed to starve.”

 

He whipped a spoon out from the pocket of his khakis but held it just out of her reach.  “Have you got a fever?”

 

“I don’t think so, but I haven’t got a people thermometer here.”  With one hand, she feebly grabbed for the spoon.  “Give it to me, Fitz.”

 

“Half a mo.”  Sitting on the edge of the bed, he brushed her hair back from her forehead and placed first his palm, then the back of his hand over it.

 

“You’re getting my hair in the soup.”

 

“Sorry.”  He pulled his hand away apologetically and handed her the spoon. “You’re fine.  Well, as fine as can be expected.”

 

She passed the bowl back to him and began to tie back her hair, spoon still firmly in hand.  “If the same could only be said of my experiment.  It wasn’t supposed to stay in the icebox this long.”

 

“I’ll check on it,” he promised, handing it back again. “You’ll have to tell me what it’s supposed to look like.”

 

“Send me a picture and I’ll know if it’s right.” She took a deep breath before bringing the spoon to her lips.  “What did I miss in Advanced Weaponry?”

 

He explained in detail as she drank the soup, periodically supplying tissues and once popping down the hall to refill her water. Soup gone, she leaned back against the pillows and shut her eyes to listen.  He thought she would go to sleep, but just as he was describing the funny thing that had happened in gym, she sat up, face pale. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

 

“Did you get that soup in the Commissary?”

 

“No.  It’s from a tin.  I heated it up over a Bunsen.”

 

“Mm.”  Pushing back the covers, she put out a hand to steady herself and swung her legs over the side.  “It wouldn’t have been the one on the back counter?”

 

He shot to his feet, grabbing her under one elbow to help her as she stood.  “Maybe. I think so.”

 

“Okay.”  She let out a long, slow breath.  “I’m going to need to go to the toilet.  And I think an emetic would not be out of the question.”

 

“An emetic? Why-”  He stopped, screwing up his eyes.  “There was a reason you weren’t using that vial.”

 

Patting his arm, she gave him a weak smile. “It’s the thought that counts. But next time, perhaps stick with tea.”


	4. Playbill

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Possibly the only time I will ever write a fic in which they are not scientists, a gift for my sister who is a musician—FitzSimmons Musical Writers!AU.

“The first time Fitz heard the score on a proper piano, he cried,” Jemma Simmons confides to me, twirling her long brown hair around one finger. 

She is giving me a tour of the tiny studio where she and her partner, Leo Fitz, wrote the book and music for the new hit musical _North & South_. Though the tour is, of necessity, taking place on Skype, I can see that the old upright piano is dilapidated enough to make even a non-musician wary.  Leo, or Fitz as he prefers to be called, denies her statement fervently until Jemma pulls out her phone and threatens to send me the video of the sitzeprobe, at which point he lapses into silence with a muttered “Well, I wasn’t the only one.”

“We both cried,” she agrees.  “It was so-“

“-surreal.”

They often finish each other’s sentences. More often than not, actually, they speak together, either explaining something to me with different words or talking to each other in half sentences they don’t feel the need to complete. The over-all impression is of two minds in total harmony, attacking the same problem from different angles. It’s not unlike the final song in the musical, where the romantic leads trade their signature themes and blend them into something entirely new.  With that in mind, it suddenly makes sense how two kids barely out of school have managed to write the smash hit of the season.  _North & South_ had a fantastic run in the West End before transferring to Broadway in the fall, where it took the town by storm and racked up seven Tony nominations. It’s being compared to _Les Miserables,_ which they find flattering after being reassured it’s no longer en vogue to be “too cool for _Les Mis_ ”, and _Oliver!_ , which makes them both shudder.

“ _Oliver!_ was actually an inspiration,” Simmons says, and Fitz adds, “because we decided we wanted to do something like that but, you know, a million times better.”

Better than _Oliver!_? I ask.  After all, it won three Tonys in addition to six Academy Awards.

“But it’s not really Dickens,” Simmons explains. “There was so much in the work of those social reformers that our own society is really still struggling with, and we wanted to be able to explore that more fully.  _North & South_ was just the first that we thought of that was manageable – Dickens is really too big to do him justice in a two-hour show.”

To hear that _North & South_ was just one of many options is surprising; the work reads as a labor of love so strong that one would think it had been their childhood dream. Instead, it is the musical qua musical that Fitz and Simmons are devoted to, and have been, apparently, all their lives.  Their conversation is sprinkled with references to other shows, both as inspiration and contrast: _Billy Elliot_ , _My Fair Lady_ , _Phantom_ , _Sunday in the Park with George, The Music Man_.   Ask them their favorite and they can only narrow it down to a mutual Top 5, which they are careful to differentiate from the Top 5 Best Musicals. _The Sound of Music_ , for example, is a Favorite but not a Best. Simmons saw it for the first time at age six; Fitz can’t remember _not_ having seen it.  “We love Rogers  & Hammerstein,” Fitz says.  “They really kicked the genre into a high gear.  We’re all indebted to them.”

Despite that indebtedness, Fitz and Simmons are carving a way through their chosen field that no one else has taken. Their agent, Phil Coulson, underlines this.  “What they’re doing,” he says to me over the phone, “is something completely new – both in the way they write and the way that it sounds.  They’ll tell you it’s like Rogers & Hammerstein, but it’s not.” You can’t help but agree when you see the show.  _North & South_ is at once powerful and gentle, sentimental and strong, and the book and the music flow into each other so seamlessly you can’t tell if it’s a thorough-sung musical or not.  Imagine the singing style of Henry Higgins with the strength of _Sweeny Todd_ and the beauty of Gershwin at his most lyrical, and you’re as close as you can come to explaining it. Though that would be an unholy mess, and this is not.   

Perhaps some of this has to do with the unique way it was written.  As the poster says, Book and Music are by both Jemma Simmons and Leo Fitz, despite the fact that Fitz is the primary composer and wrote the entirety of the score. When I ask about this, they repeat what they’ve told everyone else who’s asked over the last 18 months: they both did the whole thing.  Unlike every other collaboration I’ve heard of, the two don’t work in tandem. Instead, every song and line of dialogue is talked through together, but worked on separately. So the intricate tumbling together of words and music in “Clem (Strike Song)”, for example, was actually written while its composer and lyricist were 300 miles apart.  Incredibly, they maintain that the song, which is impossible to even whistle, was one of the easier ones to write.  “We had talked for _hours_ about what it needed to do and how we wanted it to sound,” Fitz explains, “plus we had already sown the seeds, musically, in the two “Lament”s. “

“The text demands certain things,” Simmons adds. “When he got back from holiday we just had to tweak a few phrases-“

“-and a couple lines that didn’t scan right.”

But how does it work, I wonder, that they can write whole songs without knowing what the other person is doing?

In response, they look at each other blankly. “But I do know what you’re doing,” Simmons says, and Fitz nods.

“We’ve worked together a long time. I know the way she’s going to write it because I’ve seen her write before.”

They must see my skepticism, because they propose a demonstration.  I give them a subject (dead squirrels) and a key (E-minor) and they separate for ten minutes. Simmons leaves the room so she can’t hear what Fitz is tentatively sounding out on the upright, making him promise not to spill any secrets.  “I could tell you some things about Jemma,” he says, brow furrowed in concentration, “we’ve known each other for a third of our lives.  But I will tell you that it’s not a secret that she’s just glad the show was a success so that she doesn’t have to work in the coffee shop any more. She hated making coffee.”

I know they met and partnered up in school, but I hadn’t realized it had been that long.  I ask how they started working together.

“Theory 1.  We sat in the back of the hall bored out of our skulls and wrote songs making fun of the professor.  It was horrible. I hope she doesn’t see this interview.” (Later, Simmons is sure to tell me that she was a fine professor, only not quite sure what to do with the two arrogant teenagers in the back.)

Then I fall silent and watch him work, strong fingers moving over the keys familiarly.  He gets the main melody line – a sonorous drone with an accidental – fairly quickly and moves on to rhythm in the last five minutes, testing out staccatos and sustained chords in equal measure.  When the ten minutes are up, Simmons re-enters, notebook in hand, and goes over to the piano.  Then, somehow, astoundingly, they sing her words to his music with not one misstep. She leans on his shoulder to hold the notebook in front of his eyes until the next-to-final note, stepping back just in time to allow him to play a cross-hand chord with a flourish. It’s as if they have performed “Dead Squirrel Song” a thousand times.  It’s not “Clem”, but it’s better than it has any right to be. 

“So,” I ask after applauding, “do you ever disagree?”

The looks they shoot at each other are eloquent. It takes a bit to drag it out of them, but eventually I get the story: Fitz wrote a song for Bessy Higgins, but Simmons, citing the character’s respiratory problems, refused to write lyrics. Much stress ensued. “We hardly spoke for ages,” Fitz says.

“I think it was two days,” Simmons adds, nodding soberly.

So what happened?

“I kept the music!  I’m going to get it in somewhere.”

“The deluxe cast album,” Simmons suggests. “As an instrumental track.”

“Or maybe our next show.”

Yes, they’re working on another show – good news for fans of musical theatre on both sides of the pond.  They play me some snatches, but refuse to tell me what it’s about in any detail. All they will say is that Tchaikovsky once wrote a ballet about the secret police and that’s serving as an inspiration. It doesn’t matter. I can already hear the sound of greatness.


	5. How May I Assist Your Call?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Imagine your OTP working your job"—this isn't quite mine, but it's pretty close!

“Yes, ma’am,” Fitz explained tiredly for the thousandth time this call, “but since you returned it on Friday after the banks were closed they won’t have been able to process it yet.  You’ll have to wait until—”

The customer cut him off again and he fell back in his chair, pressing a finger pistol to his head. Across the desk, his best friend gave him a crinkle-nosed smile as she repeated the account number her customer was lining over the phone. “Eight-three-four-four? And may I confirm the last four digits of your Social? Yes, thank you. How may I help you?”

He found it disgusting that anyone could be that chipper at this hour of the night, particularly when he knew for a fact she had been up with the birds. Plus, no one should be that happy to help people with their credit card problems, ever. Plus, what kind of idiot decided to call their credit card company after midnight on Saturday, anyway? Drunk ones, he expected. This woman he was talking to now was obviously more than three sheets to the wind. He rubbed his temples painfully and tried to break in. “Ma’am. Ma’am. I understand, but—”

Jemma reached into her desk drawer and tossed him the bottle of ibuprofen without taking her eyes off her screen. “Your account is current for this month, so it looks like your payment’s been made. No, you were on top of things!” She laughed. “My pleasure. Was there anything else—okay, you have a great night.”

Unbelievable. And here he still was, going on twenty minutes. “Ma’am, I do apologize, but there’s nothing we can do at this point. The funds will return Monday or Tuesday at the latest. If they—”

“Well, f—— that,” the customer said, and hung up with a sharp click.

“Well, _that_ was rude,” Jemma said.

“Heard it from there, did you?” He rolled his eyes to the ceiling and ground his hand into the pill bottle’s lid. “I _hate_ customers. _Hate_ them. The ones that call on Saturday night are the worst.”

“This does seem like an unusually soused batch,” she mused. “Is there a holiday we’ve missed? A sporting event? A full moon?”

He only glared, downing three pills without water.

“Well, we’re almost done, anyway, and then you can go home and sleep.”

“Cannot. The paper for Weaver, remember?”

“Oh, yes.” She had the grace to look embarrassed. “Well, I mean—”

“You’ve finished it.”

“Honestly, Fitz, I had the most _boring_ shift the other—”

The phone beeped in his headset and he answered it while she kept talking. “Thank you for calling SHIELD Credit Services, this is Leo, how may I assist you?”

“—night, it practically wrote itself.”

“No, SHIELD Credit Services.”

“It’s not that difficult—”

“No, sir, we’re not AIM.”

“—you’ll be able to whip it right out.”

“Unfortunately I haven’t got the number. Sorry about that…. Thank you, you have a good night.” His phone smile dropped away instantly. “It’s the principle of the thing. Anyway, you know it always takes me longer than it does you.”

“So come over and borrow my notes. They’re all marked and everything.  It’ll save you loads of time.”

“Won’t Skye—”

“Fitz, honestly. What night is it? Thank you for calling SHIELD Credit Services, this is Jemma, how may I help you?”

She had a point; her gregarious roommate thought the phrase _Saturday Night In_ a contradiction in terms. And it _would_ be faster with her neatly typed and color-coded notes…

“Your account number please? Yes, I can hold.” Flicking the mute button on her headset, she wheedled, “Plus, Fitz, _Doctor Who_ was on tonig— Yes, sir, I’m here. Go ahead.”

Well, then, that settled it. Help for the paper, _Doctor Who_ , that amazing tea Jemma made late at night and popcorn —for all that, he could manage another twenty minutes. The smile in his voice was real as the next call came through and only diminished by half when he had to repeated the greeting again so the querulous old woman on the other end could hear him. Jemma finished her call and rested her hand on her chin. “There’s also brownies.”

He gave her a thumbs-up and a wink. “Yes, ma’am, I have your account open now. What information were you looking for?... Yes, we can look at your statement histories… _how_ far back, ma’am?”

She saw his face blanch and mouthed _what?_ Too stunned to verbalize, he just shook his head. “Ma’am, we only keep records for fifteen years—we only keep them—ONLY KEEP RECORDS FOR FIFTEEN YEARS, MA’AM. TO GO ALL THE WAY BACK TO 1982 WE’D HAVE TO SPEAK TO—2000, yes. YES, MA’AM.”

“She wants you to pull statements from 1982?” Jemma asked, horrified.

“Month by month,” he whispered hoarsely, confident his customer wouldn’t hear him. “No, they’re not – THEY’RE NOT IN, MA’AM. NOT UNTIL MONDAY. NO, NOT EVERYTHING IS 24 HOURS. YES, I KNOW THIS IS SHIELD.”

“Put her off,” Jemma said, “transfer to May’s voicemail. That’s her job.”

Nodding, he suggested it. The customer refused with the air of doing him a favor, deciding 2000 was far enough back for tonight. He gave Simmons the cavernous look of a martyr and took a deep breath. “February 2000—FEBRUARY. THERE WERE NO CHARGES IN JANUARY.”

The end of the shift ticked past. He stayed on the phone. Jemma clocked out but perched on her desk, plying him with throat lozenges from her drawer and soothing comments when he muted himself to curse. In the forty-fifth minute of the call, the late-late-shift lead stopped by.

“Fitz has one of the ‘long-time customers’,” Jemma explained, and Koenig nodded. “Long-time customers” were an acknowledged thorn in the flesh for the whole department. This particular one was a whole bed of them. Fitz was now holding his head up in both hands, and they were only through 2009.

“And what are you still doing here? We aren’t paying you, are we?”

She shook her head. “Clocked out on time. We’ve got plans.”

“About time.” Koenig smirked at Fitz and sauntered away, suit as crisp as if it were one in the afternoon instead of morning. The man was a bloody robot. Fitz glanced at Jemma apologetically; she rolled her eyes and mouthed _it’s fine_. “But we’re still on, right?”

He scribbled _damn right_ on a piece of scratch paper and held it up. “2010 now. FIRST TRANSACTION—2010. YES.”

When the nightmare finally ended, he yanked the headset off and flung it away, the better to put his head on the desk and groan. The guttural noise was all he could manage; his throat was sore and his mouth dry and speaking seemed like the absolutely worst idea on the face of the planet. Jemma patted his head sympathetically. “Poor Fitz. That was rotten.”

In response he groaned again, not able to muster enough energy to move. Without moving her hand, she leaned over him to reach the mouse, enveloping him in a warm Jemma-cave. The soft clatter of keys came through the curtain of her hair that tickled the back of his neck, along with the barely-there melody she hummed when thinking of something else. “There,” she said, “you’re all clocked out. Your jacket? Do you still want to come over?”

“Yes,” he managed to rasp out. “Tea.”

“And brownies,” she promised with a smile in her voice. “Come on then, you great lump.”

He got to his feet obediently and shoved his arms into his jacket.  The clock read near on two. As they left, Koenig gave them a wave and another smirk.

“Jemma,” he managed to say after they got in the car, “you’re the best best friend in the world.”

“That’s all right,” she replied, patting his arm. “You can take me to dinner with your overtime money.”


	6. Perfect

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is probably my favorite drabble I've ever written, and I'm including the one where Melinda May is the owner of a leopard print Snuggie.

She steps outside into the English winter night and takes a long, deep breath.  Above, the sky is clear and bright, reflecting off the day-old snowdrifts around the house. Fitz had promised to shovel those away before the party but it’s just as well – they look pretty. As she makes her way down the path towards the old stables that now serve as their lab, Wellies slipping on hidden patches of ice, she turns to survey the old house.  With the smoke rising from the chimney and every window lit up, it looks like a Christmas card.  Perfect. Then she realises how cold she is and scurries into the lab, not even stopping to check on her specimens as she grabs the chemicals and beakers she needs.  In the dark stone room, she can see her breath. Curse Fitz and his Scottish frugality!  She’ll have to mix this up in the kitchen, which she doesn’t like doing.  It’s too easy to get chemical stains on their nice granite counters. Anyway, how are they supposed to teach Archie and Georgie proper lab technique if they never use it?

 

When she re-enters the kitchen, arms full, her new glasses immediately fog up.  “Bother!” she says, blindly feeling her way to the counter.

 

Her husband, perched on one of the high stools at the other side of the counter, looks up from the bit of metal he’s attempting to shape into a cup.  She doesn’t have to see it to know there’s a glimmer in his still-perfect eyes. “Still getting used to them?”

 

She sets her armful down on the counter and pulls off her glasses to rub at the lenses.  “At least I’m not fighting off grey hairs.”

 

“You’ll get there soon enough, my girl.” Placing the cup gingerly into the metal stand in front of him, he frowns when it doesn’t fit and pulls it out again. “Every year we do this,” he says. “Why do we never save them?”

 

She dumps calcium acetate into a glass bowl and pours ethanol into a beaker.  “Because every year you’re going to get an electric one.”

 

“Or you’re going to remember the proper incendiary.”

 

“I told you we could have had Harry bring one when he comes; he goes right by the camping shop.”

 

“Nah.”  He glances up at her and smiles.  “We’ve been giving this party how long?”

 

“Since Archie was four, so-”

 

“-six years?  I think it’s a tradition now.”  Holding up the cup on a flat palm, he eyes it critically.  “Pass the blowtorch, please?”

 

Without pausing her pour-and-stir process, she reaches into what Georgie calls “Mum and Dad’s Science Stash” and pulls out the blowtorch, sliding it across the countertop and following it with a pair of gloves. He rolls his eyes but puts them on obediently before firing it up.  “Honestly, the flame-”

 

“It’s the principle of the thing-”

 

“-is so far away from my hands that-”

 

“-You know I had to clear three boxes of matches from Georgie’s bureau-”

 

“-the likelihood of it actually _hurting-_ ”

 

“-people are going to think we’re abusing her-”

 

“Even though we’re actually giving her skills she’ll use in real life.”

 

“Well, _I_ know that, and _you_ know that, but primary school teachers are not always so understanding.” Beaker empty, she holds up the bowl for his approval.  “Look about right?”

 

“Perfect.”  Carefully, he drops the still hot cup into place.  It fits exactly.  “As is this.  Bring it over.”

 

She comes around the counter, grabbing a funnel on the way.  He holds it for her as she spoons the jelly-like substance through it into the waiting can below. “It always looks like a nasty cold,” he says as they wait for it to glob out, his arm around her shoulders.

 

“That’s disgusting, Fitz.”

 

She takes the funnel from him and drops it in the bowl as he, still wearing gloves, lights up the blowtorch with one hand and touches it to her mixture.  The flame leaps from one to the other, the jelly burning merrily.   “Well, that’s done,” she says, watching the fire dance. “We can get the fondue on now.”

 

He makes no move to let go so she can get the pot of cheese.  “I put it on the stove when you were in the lab.  Everything is ready.”

 

“Oh, well then,” she says, setting the bowl on the counter and letting herself relax.  “Let the FitzSimmons Christmas Festivities begin when they will.”

 

He presses a kiss to the side of her head and they watch their homemade Sterno burn.  And it is perfect.

 


	7. The Last First Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> written for a FitzSimmons Week 2015 prompt—man, that was a long time ago!

Fitz puts the bag of pastries between his teeth so he can get to his watch, looking first at it, then up at Simmons’s dorm window. If she doesn’t appear within the next minute, they’re going to be late for the first day of Holographic Engineering and risk not getting a table together—though at this point in their careers people will make way so they can partner up, neither he nor Simmons feel comfortable using that kind of power. More alarmingly, if they don’t leave within the next minute they are going to _be late_ , which Simmons would rather die than do. He has a sudden panicked thought that perhaps she _is_ deadand is about to jimmy the electronic lock on the door when it slides open and she comes out, their tea in hand and the weakest attempt at a smile he’s ever seen her give.

“Sorry,” she says at the same time he says, “I was getting worried!” He passes her the cranberry-bran muffin she treats herself to on the first day of school and accepts the tea in his travel mug with the monkey on it. “Is everything all right?”

“Of course.”

“Did you get bad news from home?”

“Nothing like that. I’m fine, Fitz, really.” She starts down the path briskly, leaving him to hurry after, knapsack banging against his back.

“But you were late,” he says when he catches up.

“Sometimes that happens.”

“Not to Jemma Simmons.”

“Yes, even to me.”

He doesn’t believe her, but she obviously doesn’t want to talk about it so he doesn’t press. Instead, he shoves his chocolate croissant in his mouth and talks around it about the classes they have today, the rumors about the new instructor, his predictions about the topic of the mandatory convocation later that afternoon. “Thank goodness we’ll never have to sit through another one of _those_  again—unless something goes horribly wrong and we don’t graduate, hey?”

He glances over at her to share his laugh and is met instead with a face more tragic than when Rose got trapped in the parallel world. “Something _is_  wrong! Simmons, what—”

“What day is it, Fitz?”

Looking at the sun, he offers, “Monday?”

“The first day of school.”

“Ye-es?”

“If all goes according to plan, the _last_  first day of school.”

“Ye-es?” he says again, not seeing the problem.

She stops to look at him, heedless of the time ticking away. “As in, no more school. Ever. Everything after this is the last one: the last syllabus, the last paper, the last project, the last lab.”

“About time, too.” She doesn’t respond. He tries not to check his watch again. “You were the one who made this plan in the first place, Simmons!”

Toying with the hem of her favorite sweater, she takes his accusation calmly. Oh lord, something’s really wrong. “Yes, but. I obviously didn’t think. School, Fitz—I’ve never done anything else, have you? I love my life. And now it’s ending.”

Only Simmons, he thinks, half-fond and half-exasperated. Of course she would race through school and regret when there was no more. “Yes, but then we get to have the fun of writing papers and doing projects because we want to and not because they’re assigned.”

“I like assignments,” she says.

“We don’t have to deal with professors giving us drills every morning.”

“I love the drills.”

“We can sleep in instead of being at class at ungodly hours.”

“I love ungodly hours.”

Down the way, he can see the crowds streaming into the building. They have to go. But she is on the verge of tears, her lower lip trembling, and is he going to point out to her that she doesn’t want to start her last first day of school with a tardy mark? No. “Simmons, I know it’s the end of an era, but you have to embrace it. Just because you’ve never done anything else doesn’t mean it won’t be good.”

“That’s my line,” she says, sniffling, but he sees a dim spark all the same.

“You make me act like it’s true all the time." He takes on a superior expression. "It’s only fair.”

She sighs. “All right. You’re right. I’m being silly.”

“Yes,” he says, grateful when she starts moving again. “Besides, it’s the last day at the Academy, but who says it’s your last day of school? You can always go for another doctorate.”

A light springs to her eyes. “That’s true, isn’t it? I have been thinking of neurobiology.” She takes a sip of her tea, then gasps. “Fitz! We’re going to be late! What are you thinking, standing out here talking? Do you want to have to throw our privilege around? I’ve never got a tardy mark in my life, do you think I’m going to start now?”


	8. I Tell You One Thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one's from Engineering v. Biochem—the challenge was "What Leopold Fitz, Engineer Extraordinaire, Means To Me". Of course I couldn't leave it at that.
> 
> Also, there is literally nothing in canon to say they didn't go to the Seychelles. I'm just saying.

“Well, if you didn’t hate me,” Jemma says, looking skeptically over her sunglasses, “what was the first thing you liked about me?”

She expects him to have to think, but it only takes him the space of a swallow before he’s setting his smoothie on the wicker table between their lounge chairs and swinging his legs over the side. “Your equations.”

“What?”

“Professor Fiddyment’s class—remember how she had us work out problems on the board? Yours were always so creative and intuitive and elegant, and you make your twos with that little curl.” Shrugging, he reaches out to take her hand. “I thought, ‘now, this girl—our minds work the same way, but she’s better than I am. I’d like to be her friend.’”

“Fitz,” she says, incredulous, “we were only with Fiddyment three weeks before they transferred us to Ramos.”

A smug grin spreads across his face. “See? Never hated you. Not for a second, then or later.”

Although his smile is cocky, his steady eyes behind the dark lenses do not waver and she hears what he means as clearly as though he said it. Perhaps someday his trueness will not bring her to the verge of tears, but it is not this day. She blinks back the prickle and tugs him to her for a kiss.

“You’re so easy,” he murmurs before dropping to sit at the end of her chair. No one else has ever told her that; her admittedly few boyfriends found being with her a bit of a task, and even her parents had to work more than she thought was usual. In truth, he makes it easy. At the Playground—anywhere else, really—words would stick in her throat, but something about the air of the Seychelles gives her permission to act without thinking so much, and she opens her mouth to tell him. Then he pokes her knee and the moment vanishes. “So,” he says, his mouth curved in the infitessimal way that means he’s teasing, “it’s only fair. What was the first thing you noticed about me?”

She leans back against the beach towel draped over her chair and smirks. “That’s easy: how horribly wrinkled your shirt was.”

“That was the first thing you liked?”

“You didn’t ask what the first thing I _liked_ was. Only the first thing I _noticed_.”

“C’mon, you know what I—”

“Exactness in language matters, Fitz—”

“—trying to be all sweet and you give me a grammar lesson—”

“—we’ve got in trouble in the past assuming what we meant—”

“—catch me doing that again.”

They come to a halt at the same time and smile at each other fondly, too glad to be back to their old habits to take them for granted. As she drinks him in—his eyes made bluer with the sea at his back, the slight red tint across his nose, the sensitive corner of his mouth—Jemma tries to remember the answer to his real question. With all the years between them, all the things she loves and knows about him now, recalling the very _first_ one seems an impossible task. She had tried to tell him, once, what she thought of him when they first met: quiet, pasty, smart, handsome. But those weren’t the first things she liked about him. Actually, her overwhelming memories of that time are tinged with annoyance. Everyone liked her except _him_ , for reasons unknown, and he was the one person who should. She found his dislike maddening. Particularly—

“What?” he asks, watching her smile slide from fond to pleased.

“I’ve remembered the first thing I liked about you.”

He waits.

“Right before the end of our first semester, remember that Adina Dominguez’s father died and she missed all the exam prep?”

“Yeah,” he says, eyebrows quirked.

“She asked me to go over the work in History of SHIELD with her—why me I’m not sure, there were loads of people in that lecture—”

“Probably because your notes were more complete than Professor Vaughn’s.”

She acknowledges that likely-true statement with a nod of her head and continues. “She had heaps of notes from her other classes, but one of them she had two sets. . . ” Trailing off suggestively, she watches for a sign that he knows where this will end. The red rising in his ears does not disappoint.

“You know what a disaster I was then, Simmons. I just dropped them, that’s all.”

“Hmm.” She reaches out lazily for the smoothie and takes a slow sip. “I’m sure you did drop them. And I might believe it was an accident, except that you used a different color ink when you wrote in the explanations of the process.”

“For my own benefit!” he protests, but she knows, and he knows she knows, that he had those processes memorized before he even arrived at the Academy. His blush takes on tomato qualities. “So you liked my incompetence?” he grumbles, pleating the corner of the beach towel so he doesn’t have to meet her eyes.

That will not do. Leaning forwards, she takes his face in both her hands and waits until he looks up, all vulnerability and embarrassment. Only her Fitz, she thinks. “Your _kindness_. Dominguez was a wreck and everyone knew it, and whoever she asked for notes was an idiot—”

“Mason,” he said, rolling his eyes in tandem with her shudder.

“—she would have failed if not for you. And you helped her in a way that didn’t embarrass her. And you put in extra energy to do it. As soon as I saw that, I liked you in spite of myself.”

“In spite,” he repeats, the corners of his mouth turning up.

She laughs and releases him, though he doesn’t go far. “Well, you still didn’t like me!”

“Yeah, but I did.”

“Yes, but I didn’t know that. And it didn’t matter, anyway.”

“Because I won you over with my scintillating lecture on the weaknesses of classifying elements by shared properties.”

“No,” she says, unable to keep herself from putting her hand to his cheek, “because I couldn’t classify _you_. And then somewhere I stopped trying, because you’re in a class by yourself.”

“Really?” he asks, almost shyly.

“Of course, Fitz.” And suddenly the small space between them gapes like a canyon, and she pulls him to her in a hug that dares the universe to separate them again. Resting her chin on his shoulder, she takes a deep breath of his scent and finds words thronging to her tongue. It’s not the Seychelles, she realizes. It’s just him. “Fitz. We’ve known a good many people and many of them have similar properties, but there’s no one in any galaxy like you. I’ve spent my whole adult life comparing, so I know.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” But his hands adjust themselves on her back, holding her tighter.

“I’m _not_. Handsome men, but none as handsome; smart people but none as brilliant; people who argue and people who agree, but none who do both so well; kind and good people but none who can even come _close_ to you.”

“You can,” he mumbles into her hair.

He thinks more of her than she deserves. But he will never believe her if she argues, so instead she strokes the soft skin at the nape of his neck and says “If so, it’s because you help me be the person you think I am.” A phrase floats to her from way back, something, she thinks, her grandfather used to say about her grandmother, and she smiles as she realizes how perfect it is. “You’re my better half.”

Pulling back just enough to meet her gaze, he shakes his head. “The girl is the better half, I think.”

“We’re each other’s better half,” she says firmly. “Everywhere I lack, you make up, and we both know I bring the cheerful personality and fashion sense to this relationship.”

“And a million other things.”

He watches her with _that look_. Over the last months, she has tried to name it, to qualify it; she thinks, vaguely, that if she does she will be able to grasp how exactly how much Fitz loves her. She loses the battle every time. It’s just The Look—pure, undeserved, infinite love. She pushes back her sunglasses, hoping that he can see the same on her face. “A million, really?” she says, unable to contain her grin. “I expect an enumerated list.”

“I’ll trade you,” he laughs.

She sticks out her hand, thumb up. “Done.”

 


	9. May, Muted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one is part of my Soulmate Harmony AU, in response to a prompt. If you haven't read that, this probably won't make sense!

May always appreciated Fury’s uncanny ability to provide clear direction while allowing room for his agents to interpret the best way to carry out their tasks. Some criticized the opportunity that left for Stark-like noise, but Stark was a solo trumpet virtuoso and most SHIELD agents did their jobs so quietly no one knew to complain. You learned how to be efficient that way. To rely on your own judgment. To make the call when you had nothing but a gut instinct and your song resounding in your ears. She used to relish that freedom. Now she heard nothing at all, and she didn’t trust her judgment anymore. She still knew better than to question Nick Fury.

“One specialist, one biochemist, and one engineer,” he said, his eye boring into her. “Anyone you want, as long as they can get the job done if necessary. I know I can trust you.”

She didn’t answer. It wasn’t really a question. Fury knew as well as she did—or better—what she would do for Phil Coulson. Instead she nodded sharply before taking her silent way back to her desk with the rest of the paper pushers, her fortress where nothing hurt more than a paper cut. She couldn’t have refused. She didn’t want to, really. This job—she wouldn’t trust anyone but herself to see it through. But she dreaded leaving the quiet safety of this place.

As she finished the stapling she had abandoned at Fury’s summons, she planned her next movements. Forming any specialized team required careful consideration to ensure it didn’t fall apart at the first sign of stress. Balance. Blending. These were what she required. And then, on top of that, she needed to find people whom Coulson would choose and think it was his own doing, which meant, first and foremost, she could only choose agents in tune.

In tune—a concept she understood, but didn’t put much stock in. Chinese musical traditions didn’t have tonality the way western cultures did, and their polyphonic music consisted of the same melodic lines repeated with only slight differences. Chinese songs ran in families. Chinese people didn’t expect to find someone whose soul sounded like theirs—that’s why arranged marriages were so prevalent for so many years. You could make anything work if you tried. And she knew all too well songs that sounded good together didn’t guarantee success.

But Phil? He believed it whole-heartedly. He paired his agents by their key signatures, listened to music in his marks’ keys before making contact, and had Steve Rogers’s song—including the skips where the record was scratched—memorized. They were both B flat major, he had proudly slurred one sake-soaked night after a mission gone south, “trumpets and everything,” and she had laughed and flicked his tie and asked if that meant he and Cap were soulmates, smiling tolerantly at his indignant recitation of Peggy Carter’s virtues. Phil would never allow himself to be compared to his hero. Even then, before everything, Melinda had the sneaking suspicion they were more alike than Phil thought. By now, May knew it. It was only the least of the reasons she would do as Fury asked.

A simple search of SHIELD databases returned enough B flats to begin with, across all divisions—significantly more specialists than scientists, but she expected that. It wouldn’t make her task difficult; decades of working for SHIELD granted her enough knowledge and experience to know what to look for. She didn’t need her song to tell her that anyone who had three SOs in four years would be a bad fit or that the blacker Hill’s ink the less respect she had for the person under consideration. The first round of cuts was easy; the second not difficult; the third only slightly harder. By the fourth round, she had stopped paying attention to key signatures and specialties to concentrate solely on personalities and availability, confident in her selections and only trying to find the best combinations.

Only after she chose the final team did she realize she had three specialists and no scientists.

Dismayed, she went back through her piles. Apparently she had unknowingly weeded out all the scientists in the second round. Going over the profiles again, she realized why: they shared the same poor marks on their field assessments and inflated opinions of their own abilities. It seemed the heroic and adaptable qualities of the key, useful for Comms and Ops, turned scientists from helpful to Mad. No wonder there weren’t many of them in SHIELD. Even Phil, more generous and willing to take on projects than she was, wouldn’t accept these options.

Well—she hesitated over Dr. Franklin Hall. But no. He had retired and wouldn’t want to spend his golden years flying around the world in a plane. But maybe, May thought, he might have an idea. Anyone he had worked well with could be an option, whatever their keys happened to be.

Covert inquiries through various untraceable channels returned a list of names, most of which she had already rejected. Only one new name stood out: FitzSimmons.

The database search was unhelpful no matter how many different ways she tried to spell the last name. A quick search of the Academy’s separate systems, however, had entirely different results. Fitz _and_ Simmons. Two people so brilliant, so gifted, so collaborative that their nickname had become legendary in their discipline, which explained why Hall hadn’t felt the need to elaborate. Armed with their full names, May pulled up their records.

Undeclared, she noted first. Married, she noted second.

She was more concerned about _married_ , knowing too well what that relationship signified about the bond between two people. No matter how dedicated and principled—perhaps _especially_ if dedicated and principled—soulmates prioritized the other person over anyone or -thing else when the situation demanded it. But Coulson, unaware, would be more concerned with _undeclared_. She found their privacy admirable. He would be alarmed. Not that there was anything to keep them from being in the correct key, but if he didn’t _know_ , even their impressive skillset might not be enough to convince him.

Frustrated, she returned to her chosen specialists, realizing they needed reassessing if she could have only one. It proved nearly impossible this time. None of the candidates could stand on their own. Each had weaknesses that the other two were meant to make up, any of which could fatally damage a mission. The strongest, Ward, was also the most risky. With three B flat majors to drown him out, his B flat minor wouldn’t matter so much. But if she couldn’t find scientists she was certain of, Coulson would never choose Ward over any of these other, lesser candidates. Damned if she would put his life into the hands of someone less than perfect.

For the first time since Bahrain, May missed her song.

She could listen to one of her recordings, of course. She knew she wouldn’t. The reminder of everything she lost with it hurt her too deeply. It wasn’t the song she wanted, anyway; it was the confidence in her decisions and certainty in herself. She could get on without it if she had to, but this mission, these decisions, Phil required more.

Without meaning to, her eyes strayed back to the Fitz and Simmons files. They were so clearly the best candidates, if not for those two disastrous facts: _undeclared. Married._ Even if there was only one drawback, she might recommend them, but as it was—

But.

 _Married_. And so there must have been a wedding. And anyone who attended this wedding with half an ear would know what key they were in, whatever the paperwork said.

“They didn’t play it,” their SciOps supervisor said, clearly still vaguely awed by the presence of Melinda May in her office.

“Why?” May asked, brusque to hide her sharp regret.

The supervisor shrugged. “No one knows except them. With anyone else you would think they didn’t harmonize, but with those two. . .” Trailing off, she seemed to expect May to be able to fill in the blank.

May raised one eloquent eyebrow. “Those two what?”

“Oh!” Squirming, the supervisor rushed to explain. “Well, there isn’t any question that they harmonize. Weaver told us so when she sent them here after they left the Academy, and we’ve seen it ourselves since then. No one can work so well together if they don’t. And they’re too smart to fool themselves they can beat the odds of divorce if they didn’t. No, whatever key they’re in, I’m sure it’s the same. They’re just private, you know. You wouldn’t know they were married if they didn’t wear rings and you’d never guess it was to each other if you just watched them in the lab. But they’re highly in tune, that’s certain.”

Standing, May brushed off the repeated assurances, fully aware that the more often someone repeated a thing the less likely it was to be true. “I’d like to see for myself.”

She didn’t know why. She already knew their work surpassed their contemporaries; seeing it wouldn’t tell her their key, which is what she needed. She couldn’t back out now, though.

The supervisor agreed enthusiastically, her solicitousness diminishing only slightly when she realized May wanted to stand outside and observe. She quailed under May’s stone gaze, however, and directed her to the best position to see without being seen. May couldn’t hear anything, but she could watch. Actions spoke louder than words, anyway. She’s always believed that.

Fitz and Simmons looked up from the holotable in unison at the sound of the door opening, surprise clear on both faces until Simmons managed to cover it with pleasure. The supervisor must have said something, because they began speaking: in turn, with the slightest of glances at each other throughout, continually gauging the other person’s response. Fitz played with his wedding band as he spoke. Simmons stepped just slightly to the side, casually bringing herself closer to him. A few minutes in, they began confidently manipulating the projection without stopping their speech or even looking at their work, sure that the other person would be there when needed. It almost looked like a dance, or like an ice skating routine—they moved to music only the two of them could hear. You couldn’t tell they were married? May snorted. It was as clear as the scar on her side. Of course they were married. Of course they were in tune, if you believed in that kind of thing. She hardly did, and she found herself wishing she could hear their song. It looked beautiful. The two of them together looked _right_.

For a second, May thought the quiet strain of music came from somewhere down the hall. When she placed it, she had to put a hand against the wall to brace herself.

* * *

 

Fury looked up from the files she’s handed him. “You realize FitzSimmons hasn’t passed their field assessments.”

“Coulson likes a project,” she said.

He tightened his mouth skeptically, but he knew she was right. Letting the pages fall into place, the Director leaned back in his chair. “You concerned at all that you haven’t picked anyone in his key?”

“No.”

“No?” He tossed the files onto the desk between them. “Forget FitzSimmons. You can make a case for them—who knows what they are—but Triplett is a known quantity.”

“G minor is the relative major of B flat major. It’s close enough.”

“If you’re sure,” Fury said in that way only he had.

May stood her ground, the soft, hesitant sound of the _pipa_ providing strength she didn’t know she lacked without it. “I have a good feeling about it,” she said.

Fury nodded. “Okay then. Pass this to Hill and we’ll get this thing started.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you're wondering, because Trip joined the team and not Ward they were never dropped out of the Bus and everything that came of that didn't happen. Because it's my AU and I say so.


	10. Spies at Sunday Brunch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Agent-85 said "someone write me a thing where one half of FitzSimmons tells someone they're brother and sister and the other has to deal with it." Agent-85's wish is my command.

“Well aren’t you two just the cutest things?”

Fitz offers a polite smile to the speaker, a tiny linen-pantsuited woman with the bird-like bones of old age. Jemma, totally preoccupied with whatever Daisy’s telling them in their ears as her eyes track the mark they’re trailing, doesn’t even look over.

“I couldn’t help but overhear y’all talking,” the woman continues, “we don’t hear too many accents like yours outside the movies!”

“We don’t hear yours either,” he says, and the woman laughs delightedly. Moving her wire chair a little closer to their table, she sends a gust of pungent perfume wafting their way. He almost chokes on it.

“Just like the Queen! But I bet you get that all the time.”

Fitz represses a shudder, grateful Jemma’s frown means she’s concentrating on their next move and probably didn’t hear the sheer ignorance on display. She has a great deal of Northern pride and has apparently adopted the Scottish prickliness towards being mistaken as English on his behalf. “Not really,” he says truthfully.

“Bev, are your hearing aids on? Can’t you tell this one’s from the banks and braes of Loch Lomond?”

Another woman, much more generously endowed than her friend but wearing an equally horrible pantsuit, plops into the second chair at the other table. Bev cants her head to the side and peers at him with one eye. “Eire?”

“Scotland,” he says, unable to hold it back any longer. “It’s Scotland.”

“Like Sean Connery,” the new one says.

“Sandy Wright! He doesn’t sound a thing like Sean Connery.”

“Say Bond,” Sandy directs him, and he shakes his head, sending a plea across the table at Jemma. Fidgeting with her comm under cover of adjusting her hair, she comes back to him enough to say, “Did you ask for the bill?”

Both ladies coo at her words, and while he is the first person to admit that nearly everything Jemma does is adorable, he doesn’t think that exactly warrants it. “I’ll go hunt down the waiter,” he says, pushing to his feet with a covert check of his pocket to make sure his ICER is safely hidden. That’s his cue to follow their mark into the men’s restroom to make sure he doesn’t escape from under their noses.

He doesn’t think he’s gone any time at all, but when he returns in a bit of a rush the two women have left their table entirely to flank Jemma and she’s looking between them with an increasingly panicked expression, pushing her hair behind and in front of her ears every two seconds, and as he finally reaches the table with every intention of declaring their car is waiting he hears her blurt out, “but we’re brother and sister, so, you see, it’s nothing like that!”

He stops short. Bev and Sandy fall back.

Bev, at least, has the grace to look embarrassed. “Oh, dear, I’m so sorry! You should have said earlier, we wouldn’t have made such—said those things.”

Jemma tries to wave it off as she gets to her feet, dropping her napkin onto the table. “You couldn’t know—you know us Brits, so private—”

“Yes,” Sandy says, squinting her eyes. “And Scots, too? Because you’re not Scottish, are you?”

“By affiliation,” Jemma says desperately, sending him an SOS of her own.

“You would think,” Sandy muses, “you’d have the same accent, if you’re brother and sister.”

Fitz puts his arm around Jemma’s shoulders in what he hopes is a brotherly manner, willing his thumb not to stroke her shoulder. “What it was,” he says, intentionally putting on the broadest brogue he can manage, “was my da insisted I go to a Scottish immersion school, dinnae want to lose the auld mither tongue, ya know? But this lass here, mam had the making of her. Proper bonny English Rose. Our wee sister only knows Finnish. You’ll be lettin’ us bide now, ladies?” Without waiting for an answer, he spins them both around and beats a hasty retreat to the door, not wanting to think about how ticked off Daisy would be if she had to chase down the mark herself.

“For heaven’s sake, Jemma,” he says in an undertone as they pass the hostess stand, “why’d you pick that of all things?”

She huffs a little, digging around in her bag after her own ICER. “As soon as you left they pounced on me, Fitz, wanting to know all about our relationship status and were we here on holiday and did I think you were going to propose soon and where the best places were for that sort of thing—I had to get them to stop talking somehow!”

“Then why didn’t you just tell them the truth?” he asks, holding out his hand to stop her charging around the corner before he clears it.

She glances down at her clavicle, where a carat of cloaked sapphires he proposed with last week drag down the vibranium chain. “Oh, you know,” she says with that secret smile that’s just for him. “I am still English, you know. We do like our privacy.”

Bev and Sandy watch them go until the door closes behind them. Bev sighs heavily. “They were so cute together. It’s a crime they’re related.”

“Bev, are you wearing your glasses? Didn’t you see the lump in his pocket?”

“Sandy!” Bev says, scandalized.

Sandy rolls her eyes, taking a long sip of her bloody mary. “Don’t be dirty. It was a gun, Bev. They weren’t brother and sister, they were spies undercover. I told you you watch the wrong kind of movies.”


	11. Something Like Paradise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This technically does not fall within the title of this collection, being over 2000 words, but I'm really pleased with it and it's odd to post anywhere else. This was written to be meta-fanfiction of an episode in the fictional television series Meet Cute as portrayed in the TRULY amazing fic of the same name by Hiatus 2016's Team Engineering. I recommend reading that in the STRONGEST terms. If, for some reason, you don't like masterpieces, a brief summary:
> 
> In chapter 15 of that fic, the actors FitzSimmons play two people who meet on a tropical island vacation—she, vivacious and adventurous; he scared of everything but willing to follow her lead. Alas, due to obligations in their real lives, they had to part forever. It was horribly sad. There would have been fix-it fic if it was real.

This was a mistake.

Jemma stared bleakly into her half-empty wineglass. She had thought, after a year—a year exactly, actually, a year today, but who was counting?—she would be able to eat oysters without bawling, but apparently she was wrong. They weren’t even _raw_ , she chided herself. She shouldn’t be haunted by the sound of phantom waves or feel gritty sand in her mouth. She shouldn’t be able to see eyes bluer than the sea or the sky over the rim of the shell. But no. It was hopeless. She let the shell fall back to her plate and caught the waiter by the elbow, asking quietly for her check. No, she didn’t want a to-go box. Maybe next year, but not now.

After settling the bill, she shouldered her purse and retrieved her umbrella from its depths. At least the fine grey drizzle matched her mood. Sun of any sort, even the weak light of an English April evening, would only remind her of what she was missing with every fiber of her being. Tears prickled as she moved through the restaurant with no further goal than to return to her rented room before she couldn’t hold them back anymore. She ducked her head, using her finicky umbrella as an excuse to avoid looking up. A draft of cool air against her face signaled her end destination, where at least if a few tears escaped she could pretend they were rain, and she pushed forward eagerly, pressing the button to raise her umbrella.

Which, annoyingly, immediately became tangled in the lowering black umbrella of the person entering as she tried to leave. “Sorry,” she mumbled, pulling back enough to let them both loose.

“Jemma?”

No, it couldn’t be. She was sad and lonely and thinking of him, that was all, and she had officially crossed the line between reasonable grief and insanity. He wasn’t here. He couldn’t be here.

 _But what if?_ Her traitorous heart whispered, _what if?_

Slowly, almost without permission, her gaze rose from the wing-tipped shoes to the crisply pressed trousers to the long, white-knuckled fingers clutching a briefcase and the umbrella handle— _they could be his hands, they could be_ —up his torso and over his shoulders to his mouth— _didn’t she know those lips, hadn’t she felt them on hers in the last year’s worth of dreams?_ —to the blue, blue eyes she hadn’t been able to escape all day. Her knees threatened to give out under her. “Fitz,” she breathed.

The air fizzled, buzzed, thrummed between them for an eternal second while everything besides her racing pulse stopped mid-motion.

Then he dropped the case and the umbrella with a clatter she didn’t know linoleum could make, and then her own umbrella joined them as she abandoned it in favor of clutching his collar because one of his hands was in her hair and the other at the small of her back and his lips, oh, his lips were fervent, confident, exuberant against hers and she was never letting him go again.

She never would have, if it had been her choice, but too soon he pulled away, his hand trailing from her hair to her cheek to thumb at the tears that had finally burst their dam. “I’m sorry,” he panted, “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“I think you should,” she half-laughed, slightly giddy, “but it was awfully spontaneous of you. You can’t blame me for being surprised.”

He laughed too, leaning forward to rest his forehead against hers. “If you knew how many times I’ve thought about doing that—”

“How many?”

“At least three hundred forty-one.”

Once for every day since they said goodbye. Her smile grew to searchlight wattage, and she couldn’t help tilting her face up to at least make a semblance of kissing him again. “Me too,” she murmured, trailing her mouth across his face, “even when I tried not to.”

In response he merely pulled her tighter, notching his chin over her shoulder as though he meant to keep her with him by force. No force needed, Jemma thought, and twisted her fists in his jacket, burying her face in his chest.

She didn’t know how long they would have stood there if the maître ‘d hadn’t come up to politely inform them they were blocking the entry, and did they need a table? He gave her a strange look—no doubt he recognized her as the woman who had callously abandoned a full plate of seafood—and she gave the best approximation of an apologetic smile she could muster. Not a very good one, she knew, because there was no room for anything in her heart or her face but joy. Fitz shifted out of the hug, keeping one arm snug around her back, and looked into the crowded restaurant beyond. “You just ate,” he said.

“No,” she said, “not really. But—” But who knew how long she would have him this time? She didn’t want to waste it in a room with scheduled interruptions and a bunch of strangers. “I have a room,” she said, more quietly.

His eyes lit up as he looked down at her. “I have a flat. Let’s do that, then.”

“Sorry,” she told the maître ‘d as Fitz let go of her long enough to retrieve their things from the floor. To her surprise, he made an understanding face and waved them off tolerantly, already turning to the next guests in line.

Out on the sidewalk, Fitz swung his umbrella over both of them and put his arm back around her shoulders, gazing at her as if she were a newly discovered Van Gogh. “So,” he said.

“So.”

And then they burst out laughing, loud helpless peals that echoed off the buildings and cars and sent tears down their cheeks and left them clutching each other to keep upright. “We must look drunk,” she said finally, swiping at the sticky mascara streaks she knew were trailing down her face.

“I am drunk,” he said, “drunk on getting everything I thought I never would. I think this is what it feels like, at least, I still haven’t ever been drunk, officially. What do we do next? Get a cab? I think there’s a cab stand up here somewhere.”

“Around the corner. But we don’t have to, if you don’t want to—we can, I don’t know, there’s a coffee shop around the corner, I didn’t mean—”

“No,” he said firmly. She glanced up quickly, a little startled by his surety. “I don’t want anywhere we’ll get kicked out of in a few hours. I want to make this last as long as we can. But—” He frowned, using the hand holding the umbrella to scratch at his scruff—that was new, she realized, and wondered why she hadn’t noticed it earlier. “If you’re not comfortable with that, I understand. We can do anything you like.”

She surged up onto her toes to kiss him again, his mouth and then his cheek and then just by his ear. “Your flat sounds fine to me. Let’s live a little, hmm?”

“Really?”

“Really.” She rolled back to flat feet but left her hands and eyes steady. “I trust you, Fitz.”

A smile broke back over his face. “All right, then. Cab it is.”

They made their way down the street tucked together like a couple in a movie, or a painting, and Jemma spared enough mental energy from being deliriously happy to wonder breathlessly how this had even happened. A flat, he had said, like a temporary one? Or something more permanent? And how had he come to be in the doorway of a restaurant known for its adventurous cuisine the very day and hour she had been there thinking of him? As coincidences went, it was nearly unbelievable. And yet, here she was with her arm around his waist and his lips on the top of her head when they paused for the lights to change, and she knew she wasn’t dreaming. She couldn’t have imagined how scruff would pull at her hair.

He handed her into the cab and swung himself in after, turning to her eagerly as soon as the door closed behind him. “You have a room,” he said, taking her hands in his. “How long do we have? How long until you have to go back?”

Her eyebrows drew together until she realized how much of her life had passed since the last time she saw him, and she sucked in a breath and bit her lip before responding. Even eight months later, she had a hard time speaking about it. “My mother passed away, Fitz.”

His hands tightened around hers. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t expected, was it?”

“No,” she said, “it was very sudden. The treatments just—stopped working, I suppose, and she rather—fell apart—”

She meant to stop there, but he gave her an encouraging nod and waited, thumb stroking at her knuckles, and everything came out in a rush: how quickly her mother had faded away, what it was like to be truly alone in the world, how she had sat down with the freedom she had longed for and realized she didn’t know what to do with it, the life she was building now. “I’m still freelance editing. It pays well, you know.” He nodded. “But,” she said shyly, “I started volunteering a few months ago, teaching painting at the parish center.”

“Jemma! That’s fantastic.”

She couldn’t help the quick leap her heart gave—no one else had understood what a big step it was for her—and her contented smile turned to a grin. “Yeah? Someday I want to go into hospitals, but I can’t yet.”

“No, of course not.” The cab slowed to a stop, and he moved to the edge of the seat, pulling his wallet from his back pocket. “I want to hear more—I want to hear everything—but we’re here, so hold on, yeah?”

He paid the cabbie and came round to open her door, tripping a little on the curb and fumbling in his bag for the keys. There was the old Fitz, she thought as he dropped them, and she leaned forward to scoop them off the pavement. “Here,” she said, holding them out. As she did, a tiny shell fell out of her hand and dangled from the ring between them. “Fitz. Is that—?”

A tingle zapped between them as his fingers brushed her palm. With the light behind him, she couldn’t make out his expression. Only his voice, gravelly and shaky, gave her any clue he felt it too. “Coming?”

She took his hand and they dashed to the front door, laughing as they shook the drops from their hair. He had to put his shoulder to the door to get it open, and she laughed at that too, and they laughed all the way up the stairs and as he let them beyond the green door into the flat. And then he swung the door shut behind him and the laughter died entirely away as they looked at each other properly for the first time all night. She let her gaze rove over his face, tracing the features she’d spent the last year imagining. She had forgotten them after all, she thought, or else there was something different about him—a new firmness to his jaw, or broadness to his shoulders, or something—whatever it was, it went straight to her head like champagne. But his eyes when they met hers were still _his_ , and he smelled the same, even slightly like suncream, and the tender way he brushed the very tips of his fingers over her cheek was just like she remembered. “Hey,” he whispered, disbelieving adoration all over his face.

“Hey,” she breathed back, knowing she had the same.

“As ridiculous as it is, I’m starving—would you mind if we ordered take-away? I know it’s not as exciting as what you ate earlier.”

Her cheeks hurt from smiling so much, but somehow she managed another crease. “I didn’t eat anything earlier. Take-away sounds perfect. What shall we have? Indian? Thai?”

“I was thinking Moroccan, actually, there’s a really good place that delivers until midnight—”

“Since when do you eat Moroccan?” she laughed.

His gaze didn’t waver at all. “Since I met you and decided to live, instead of exist.”

Sucking in a tiny breath, she wasn’t sure if the exhale would be a laugh or a sob. It was too unbelievable, he was too real, she was too happy to bear it one second more. She swayed into him, reaching for his elbow to pull him closer. At the last moment, though, he turned to brush his mouth across her cheek before stepping back. “It’ll just be a second. Make yourself at home,” he called over his shoulder, and disappeared into the tiny kitchen off the main room. Dropping her purse on the table just to the side of the door, she slipped out of her shoes and moved into the flat proper, tugging her cardigan more tightly around her to ward off the chill of hope. “A really good place,” he said, as though he knew it from personal experience. As though he had been here long enough to find the best take-away. As though somehow, miraculously, they had come together in the same place at the same time for—well, she wouldn’t think that far ahead yet. Longer than two weeks, at least.

Standing in the middle of the room, she did a slow spin, looking for marks of an extended stay. Several pairs of shoes piled by the entrance to the hallway and a jacket flung carelessly over the back of a chair spoke to a certain dimension of wardrobe, but she didn’t really know much about his clothing habits. The row of books on the shelf above the television comprised his favorites, she remembered as she scanned the titles with one finger, but that didn’t mean much; anyone would bring their favorite books to a place they were staying awhile, particularly if they didn’t know anyone there. Particularly Fitz, who had lived vicariously through other people’s adventures for so long. She smiled at the plaid blanket trailing off the arm of the sofa to puddle on the floor and moved to fold it in two quick motions and place it along the back. Concentrated on that task, she didn’t notice the large photograph above the sofa until she stepped back to make sure the blanket was straight. When she did, she needed both hands to keep her smile from floating off her face.

Fitz came around the corner, saying something, but her joy was too loud to hear it. “Fitz, it’s our beach!”

A quick flush spread across his face, and he ducked his head to put a hand on the back of his neck. “Uh, yeah. From the day we—”

“I know,” she said, drinking in every pixel. The sand stretched away empty in front of her, the silhouette of palms stood black against the brilliant sunset, and she could almost hear them laughing as they splashed water at each other just out of frame. That had been the beach he kissed her at, she remembered, and the riotous glee coursing through her turned suddenly shy. Clasping one wrist with her other hand, she studiously avoided looking over. “It’s a good picture. Much better than I would expect through your ridiculous phone case.”

“That ridiculous phone case that protected my very expensive phone when you shoved me in the ocean?” She felt him come to a stop beside her, just close enough that his sleeve could brush hers.

Goosebumps rose under her sweater. “I had to put all my pictures away. I couldn’t—I couldn’t bear to look at them.”

“I couldn’t bear not to.” Achingly slowly, he reached between them, his fingers dipping into the crevices between hers before requesting admittance with a tap at her balled fist. She granted it gladly, feeling the warm comfort of his palm against hers all the way down to her toes. “If I didn’t look at them,” he continued quietly, “I might go back to the way I was before, and I didn’t want that. I wanted to be the man you helped me believe I could be. So I printed out the pictures, and I got the shell for my keys, and every time I saw them it reminded me what I missed out on by being afraid.”

She turned to face him, brushing her thumb over his. “Oh, Fitz.”

Staring steadily at the photo, he smiled almost painfully. “Really, I have you to thank for everything that’s happened to me in this last year. I never would have volunteered to head the branch here if it hadn’t been your hometown—of course I knew you weren’t here, but it seemed like a sign. And Moroccan food’s really good, actually, and I’m going to Tokyo next month for meetings, and it’s just, like—” He stopped and shook his head. “This is not the way I planned it.”

Blood beat in her ears and the hand not safe in his started to quiver, and she ran over his rambling like a double-decker bus. “Branch,” she repeated, not quite a question.

He looked at her then, quizzical. “Yeah, a branch. Like, a subsection of the business? My father agreed that it would be good to learn the business a different way. I’ve been here about six months. It’s going pretty well, actually, he’s really pleased. But, Jemma—”

“You live here.” Six months! He’d been here six months and she hadn’t known! She almost laughed aloud.

“Yeah,” he said, now less confused than concerned. “Jemma, that’s not really the essential—I’m trying to say, you changed my whole life, and I’m so glad I got to see you again, even if it’s only for tonight, so you could know what you— _oomph._ ”

Fortunately, his reflexes were good, because the way she threw herself into his arms would have ended very painfully if he hadn’t instinctively caught her, holding her up as she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed every bit of him she could reach. “Fitz,” she said between breaths, “it doesn’t have to be just for tonight. I can’t believe I didn’t say—how did I leave it out—Fitz, I _am_ here. There was no reason to stay in New Jersey with my mum gone, so I moved back. Six months ago.”

She felt him wobble and tried to regain her footing, allowing him to peel her just far enough away so they could meet eyes. His were a perfect storm of all the emotions churning in her own stomach, every bit of hope and delight and happiness a person could feel darkened only by an astonished bewilderment that brought out the blue. “Here!” he said, more a bark of laughter than anything else, “you’ve been here all the time I’ve been here, and we didn’t even know?”

“And we never _would_ have,” she said, darting back in for another pass over his face, “if we hadn’t accidentally been at the same restaurant on the same night and bumped umbrellas. I can’t believe it, Fitz.”

One of his hands came up to caress her face, unbearably tender when coupled with the light shining in his eyes. “It wasn’t an accident. At least, I didn’t know you would be there, but I remembered you said you loved that place, and I wanted to eat there with you for our anniversary tonight. I just didn’t think I would actually, you know, get to eat with you.”

She nuzzled into his hand, entirely unable to speak.

“Hey,” he said, tilting her face up, “I’ve never seen you smile like that before.”

“Like what?” she asked, her eyes drifting closed.

“Like you’re absolutely happy,” he said, and then he was kissing her like he needed it to breathe, and like there were fireworks lighting up the sky and the sea, and like he would never stop, ever. And she didn’t want him to.

Much later, he tugged lazily at the end of her hair. “Something occurs to me.”

She lifted her head from his chest just enough to let him know she was listening.

“You said you’re painting again, yeah? And I eat raw shellfish, sometimes.”

“Yeah?” she said, pulling her arm more tightly around his waist.

“So, that sounds almost like a different world to me. Do you think we can make a go of it in this one?”

She sat up, her hair falling around her face as she leaned over him. He gazed up at her confidently, contentedly, more utterly relaxed than she had ever seen him. And happy, she realized, nearly as happy as she felt. Tracing the shape of his smile, she bent forward to match it to hers.

“That,” she said, “sounds awfully like paradise.”


End file.
